Separation II (S. 68; W. 78)

While seduction and attraction are dominant themes within Edvard Munch's oeuvre, these images are always laced with a sense of threat and pain: for Munch separation seemed the inevitable outcome of love and desire. Perhaps it was the early death of his beloved sister, which from then on made him fear and feel the loss of a loved one so intensely. This anxiety was to preoccupy and torment the artist throughout his life: 'When you went over the see and left me, it was as if there were still invisible threads uniting us. It was as though something was tearing at an open wound', he wrote about a lost lover. (Cited in: Prelinger Taylor, ibid., p. 136.) With Separation II he created an emblematic image of heart-break and the incorporeal yet very real pain it causes.